Alien Dominion: The Acronian Encounter is one of the most ill-named PC games of recent times. It sounds like an add on pack for AI War. More appropriate names would include Alien Dominion: Hyperdeath Space-biff, Alien Dominion: Lovely Genocide or – of course – Alien Dominion: DAKKADAKKADAKKA.

Playing the half-hour time-limited demo, I have fired over 20,000 bullets and wiped out over 100 enemy fighters. On the second level alone. I wiped out another 100 on the first, and was half way through the third with a death toll inching towards 50 or so. It is a point and click adventure. The puzzle being “exactly how many people can I kill today?”.

It’s a rail shooter, basically, taking the “pew-pew-pew! I’m in a turret” set-up of the bit when Han and Luke get behind the guns in Star Wars and transforming into the game. In play – mainly due to the mixed-production-quality and the pop-rock-metal soundtrack – it reminds me of Star Fleet. I am, indeed, Barry Hercules. Level starts. Ships come at you. You shoot them. They explode. For 10 minutes at a time.

I can’t remember a shooter so monomanical since Walker on the Amiga. It’s not as good, but there’s something happily demented about it. A lot of it comes from the simplicity. It also reminds me of the sort of thing Rage released in the late 90s – who, before the commercial-suicide glory of Hostile Waters, were best known for a string of shooters with little to recommend them other than really pretty explosions.

This has really pretty explosions. Watch it in action.

It’s not just mindless shooting. You collect resources which you can spend between levels and… okay, it really is just mindless shooting. I’d personally prefer the levels to be a little shorter, as the 10-minutes of holding down fire is going to make your fingers fall off. The biggest problem – apart from what comes directly from its nature – is the voice-acting. While the actual gunner you play is a passable impression of the TF2 Heavy’s passable impression of 80s Arnie, the other two voices aboard your ship appear to be generated from some speech synthesizer, which contrasts unfavourably against the impressive visual flair for an indie game.

It’s enormously repetitive, but I played it for the half hour and suspect if I didn’t have more work to do, I’d have thrown down the 8 quid, 12 dollars or 9 euros for the full version. It’s very silly. It is what your mum thinks videogames are like. I dig it.

The only point and click ZP joke I can think of was from the Orange Box review.

“Theres a role for everyone regardless of whatever games you like. The heavy for damage soaking thickies. The spy for back stabbing stealth playing dirtbags and the sniper for people who play point and click adventure games. Albeit the only puzzle is use gun on man to view contents.”

Make it real, using breakthrough technology, realism, and meticulous attention to detail. The interest is the human experience and our choice is to make games that are intense and engaging, and offer real-world themes that matter. Digital Fusion engages the mind, body, and soul–in the past, throughout history, in the present or the future.

If you wonder what it would “really” be like to…
…we would like to take you there.

At school I seem to remember the appropriate noise being a sort of incessant repetition of the vowel sound A punctuated with mucus-inducing swoosh noises to simulate explosions. But these were the days where only one person in the village had seen war and he was deaf, and there was no TV and cattle drove backwards.

Haha, the extract came up in my RSS feeds and I just cracked up laughing. Nicely done.
Anyway, as for the game, you’re right about the voices, just watching the video got annoying with Microsoft Mary unable to shut up. Other than that, it looks really fun :D

The voices actually amused me, mostly because you have the gunner who SHOUTS EVERY SINGLE WORD, and the captain who speaks in a completely monotone emotionless style, like the fact that they’re about to die is a bit of a bummer while the biscuits are quite nice.

‘Meh’, says I, because i’ve got Sin & Punishment 2 on the Wii, which is THE best on-rails shooter ever made. There are areas where you can also rack up 100+ kill combos in the space of ten seconds, not ten minutes.

Ahh. A mention of Starfleet. The first show I ever saw as a child (although I originally saw it in Italian!) I’m actually re-watching it now on DVD – showing the wife the wonder and terror of kids puppet shows. At this juncture Lamia has just been kidnapped and drooled over by Captain Orion and Commander Makara!

It’s not just the mindless shooting. It’s the mindless voice acting that really gets under my skin. I simply cannot ignore the female voices in this game. The AI’s sort of ok. But the commander’s (or whatever) gets in the way of my enjoyment in so many ugly ways, I feel like opening fire against my own ship… which, because this is an evil game, I can’t actually do.

The gameplay is dull, consisting of firing a gun at stuff. This would be fine, if there was any degree of skill involved, or if it felt like your gun might be having an effect, but all you end up doing is pumping bullets in the general direction of the enemy until they explode.

The voices have been discussed enough, and are crap.

The most fun I had with the game was trying to dissect the music: It seems to be a mix between riffs from Judas Priest’s “Painkiller”, Wolfmother’s “Woman”, and a couple of Iron Maiden songs, with just a few notes changed to avoid legal trouble. Utter rubbish.

I also recognise it’s bad, but… what, B-movies aren’t? Old Japanese giant robot cartoons* aren’t? This is bad, but it’s also entertaining and funny (sometimes unintentionally), which makes it loop back around to so bad it’s good. I wish the modern action movies I’d been dragged off to see were actually bad enough to be entertaining and funny, but they’re not, they’re just plain old bad. So blessed be the people who can make something that pushes my joy buttons. So to speak.

The game seems to be having a laugh at its own expense, it’s very self-deprecating, especially with some of the interactions between the Commander and Sergei, and it invites me to laugh along with it. It’s not supposed to be a ballad, puzzle, or philosophical quandary, we have plenty of games for that (or at least I do, many of which seem to be installed on my HDD right now), but rather it’s just a bit of stupid fun. Like a B-movie, or an old Japanese robot cartoon.

I’m pretty near sold on the concept anyway, the only deciding factor will be the price.

* – At least before they went all pseudo-intellectual, religious, and/or emo. The older cartoons had a sense of wonder and fun, there was this sense of realisation there, the characters were larger than life, and they revelled in the glory of having giant robots at their command. There are a few modern incarnations of those modern cartoons though, like GaoGaiGar (which I invite everyone to watch), but it’s really not enough.

These days it seems like almost every giant robot anime must have a God Armour with angel wings, a character who sulks in his room and talks about ending people, or some questionably written inner struggle (usually involving something political) in order to be aired on telly over there. And more’s the pity, really.

I remember when giant robots were unafraid to shoot love/heart beams at their foes. But no one seems to want that any more. :<

I heartily recommend Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. While it may have some of the cliche newer things you complain about in it, they’re kept to a minimum. There’s a great cast of giant robot pilots in it who revel in beating the tar out of their enemies utilizing ever larger mecha and increasingly ridiculous attacks.

Also, any mech pilot who’s catch phrase is “Who the hell do you think I am!?” is an awesome one.

I don’t know why people are complaining about the music. It’s decent enough. The voices have already been beaten to death, so I’ll mention the one thing I thought was innovative yet broken, and that’s the HUD, or rather, the radar. The concept is good, the only thing I’d complain about is that the contrast between it and the environment leaves much to be desired. The second level was the only one I could use it on; on the first and third the little crosses get lost in either the sun or the wormhole around you (and another thing I could point out is that the ships outside the wormhole move as fast as you inside…I figured it would be like the sea current in Finding Nemo, but I guess not).

Meh. It’s decent, I suppose….if I’m bored one day maybe I’ll fork out the ten bucks.